Route Driver Gene has Big Problems because of City Harassment

Two rest areas at the Missouri Okalahoma border are closed for remodeling and "Gene' the "go to" route driver for Jacobsen Distributing is in trouble since he has no place to put the 14 newspaper vending machines he services during the 11 months the areas are being closed for remodeling.

Fourteen newspaper vending machines equals almost a trailer load that would normally be destined for 11 months storage in Sioux Falls. The back yard lot used for this purpose at 2019 South Minnesota for over 18 years has been ordered empty of newspaper machines because of a complaint from a "citizen".

No explanation if it was a "visual pollution "complaint or what the substance of the complaint was about was or who made the complaint.

The city has declared the lot is in violation because it has "metal". That the machines may attract rodents and though the yard is fenced and padlocked may be harmful to children.

Therefore a city employee has declared the yard newspaper vending machines a "Public Nuisance" that must be removed at once to protect the "health and welfare" of the Sioux Falls public that they are charged with "protecting".

Owner Jacobsen has appealed the cities right to harass him constantly on demand of a "disgruntled" neighbor.

On receipt of the appeal the city issued notice of a levee of an additional all new $200 fine, the original fine having been paid previously.

This all leaves Gene, the driver with the world's longest paper route with 14 "homeless" newspaper machines.

Gene is considering parking the "licensed" trailer with the 14 temporarily "out of work" and now "homeless" newspaper machines on board directly on the Sioux Falls city streets until the matter is settled.

'Longest newspaper route in the world'

By Robert K. Elder
Tribune staff reporter
(Copyright 2006 by the Chicago Tribune)

Eugene Camillocci Jr., who crisscrosses the Midwest delivering Jacobsen's publications,
removes papers from his car during a stop in Kenosha.

It sounds like a joke, but it might not be.

"I have the longest newspaper route in the world," says Eugene Camillocci Jr., the lone, and very busy, distributor of 18 Wheel Singles and a handful of other Harlan Jacobsen publications.

"I would like to drive a truck, but you stay gone so long, it's ridiculous," said Camillocci, a highly organized man with a gap- toothed smile and a laugh full of gravel.

Over 17 days, he makes more than 300 stops in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois and South Dakota, hauling papers in his turquoise 1991 Dodge Shadow.

All the seats but the driver's have been ripped out to make room for the bundles and, on this trip, two new coin boxes are strapped to the trunk.

Compared with most newspapers, 18 Wheel Singles is a small operation: an editorial manager opens the mail, screens the ads and lays out the paper. The tiny staff includes Jacobsen's daughter Janet and Camillocci, the company's all-around go-to guy.

On a recent visit to a rest area near Kenosha, Wis., Camillocci replaced the yellowed glass in a few coin boxes, but rain prevented him from slapping on a fresh coat of paint.

Some of the machines are rehabbed and repainted Los Angeles Herald coin boxes, some 30 years old, with the newspaper logo still visible inside the boxes. "You gotta keep a certain pace; you gotta be honest," says Camillocci of the job.

Though the hours are long, the job can be messy and there's a seemingly endless stretch of asphalt to cover, he likes it.

"I'm out and about; I like being my own boss," he said.

-- Robert K. Elder